Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
What would be so bad about that?
Nothing.
Except that we wouldn’t be complete. We wouldn’t be whole. There would always be a part missing. We’d be unfinished. So the tears keep falling mostly because right now I don’t know what to choose or what to do.
And then…
I throw up. A-fucking-gain.
As before, there’s nothing really left in there to come out, but what little my body can manufacture finds its way onto the floor.
“Alec, man! Look!” Zander says. “Look what you’re doing to here. You’ve got her upset beyond, man. Come now. Let’s stop all this!”
Once again, just like she did on the Autobahn, Eliza comes to my side. And just like she did in the car, she takes my hand. “She needs to lie down. Fuck your guns and all your large-dick energy for a moment and let her lie down, you fucking twats,” she spits out in her London street tone.
“She and Danny are welcome to go,” Zander says. “Perhaps you should take the matter up with your child’s father.”
“Fuck you, cunt,” Eliza tosses off.
“Mr. Gorny, sir?” Liam squeaks. “What should I do, sir?”
“You can start by taking that fucking rifle out of her face,” Eliza says.
“Eliza,” I cough as I’m spitting the rest of what’s in me out of me.
“Christine,” Danny says, edging my way. Liam turns the rifle on him.
“Stay there!” Liam shouts.
And I must assume that in everyone’s distraction, Zander has pressed the button on the underside of the table again because…
The door bursts open and half a dozen more armed guards, the same ones who were in here before, charge into the room, weapons drawn.
Alec doesn’t take the rifle he’s holding away from being pointed at his father.
“Well, my seun,” Zander says, “I’m afraid this is now all squarely on your shoulders. You have a decision to make.” He stands and walks to the edge of the stage. “Suffer the consequences of your actions from the past and allow your friends to go on their way. Or suffer the consequences of the present. Which are much more dire.”
I see Alec staring at Zander. Thinking. Weighing the odds. Playing the angles. Triangulating the possibilities.
And I see him coming up with the same thing I can come up with. Nothing.
His shoulders sag. He lowers the rifle, slowly, letting it go limp in his grasp.
Zander forces his unfortunate smile and yet again makes his way back to Alec. He approaches, gently removes the weapon from Alec’s defeated hands, and pats him on the shoulder. “Good man,” he says.
Danny is standing near me now, concern all over his face. Eliza kneels beside me, still holding my hand. She leans in close, so only I can hear her, and says, “You need to go, love. You have to. It ain’t just about the three of you now.” And then she places her hand on my stomach.
I look at her, tears still staining my cheeks, and search her eyes. They’re kind. They’re so incredibly kind. And knowing. And pleading.
She knows.
Because of course she does.
Because she knows.
“I know it’s a sacrifice,” she says. “But that’s life, ain’t it? We don’t always get everything the way we want it. Just go. You’ve got more than most.”
If I weren’t already cried out and worn past the point of exhaustion, I might just start crying again. But I have nothing left to give. I’m beyond emotion. I’m just… numb.
She’s right.
We tried. We gave it a shot. All three of us did. We gave everything we had to try to keep our triangle together, but it was doomed from the start. Maybe Danny and I can just make another triangle. A new one. Him, me, and whatever this thing growing inside me turns out to be. Maybe that’s what the triangle was meant to be all along. Maybe—
I don’t even know if I really hear the shot.
I just see Danny fall. He collapses right beside me, head crashing to the ground next to where Eliza and I are still huddled, staring at me with shock in his eye.
His one eye.
His one remaining eye.
CHAPTER FORTY
If this is what death feels like, it fucking sucks.
Because I have to be dead. Right?
I just had a bullet from a semi-automatic rifle pierce my eye. Which means it definitely lodged in my brain. Which means I’m dead. There’s no way I survive something like that.
Which means that what I see happening right now is being observed by my… I dunno. Spirit? Or soul? Or something? Leaving my body?
I’m not sure I ever believed in any of that stuff. I never bought into the whole “life goes on even after death” bullshit. Partially because I’ve seen a lot of dead people and ain’t none of ’em look like they’re anything but gone, and partially because I don’t wanna believe it. I’d way rather just think that once your time is up, your time is up. That all the shit you’ve gone through and felt is now over and you just get to fucking rest.